Sunday, September 27, 2009

Home Schooling Is Looking Better Each Day...

The more the president talks about education, the more I want to pull my grandchildren out of school and teach them myself.First, he ran on the ticket that teaching jobs would be secure and we would have more educators to teach our children and not one teacher would loose their job.Well, he was right, not one teacher did loose their job, instead thousands of teachers across the United States have lost their jobs, schools have been shut down due to inadequate funding and few if any have received the federal or state monies that were promised during the campaign.I have also not seen all the colleges that were going to offer free tuition to those willing to go to college to become a teacher. The school district where I live, laid teachers off this year and while a few have received their jobs back, many have not.The teachers we do have, arrive at school at least an hour early, stay after school an hour or more to help with after school issues, tutoring their students or extra curricular activities. I have not seen people work or care as much as teachers do and they not only care for their own children and students, but the hundreds of other students that might need them.Many of the after school activities in our area such as scouting, sports, cheer camps, Awana's, Rangers, etc. are full of teachers that work all day and all week and yet are there giving more of their time away to students who need it.When are we going to make parents responsible for some of the education children need? Our schools have an after school program to assist students in completing their homework and the ones that recieve most of the help are those students that the school knows if they take the homework home number one, it won't get done and number two, it won't come back to school.I am not talking here about English Language Learners, I am talking about kids that can speak English, can do the work, but whose parents just do not care and feel the schools are for one thing only, their personal babysitter. Doubt me? When I was working an after school program, many days students were not picked up until 5:30 or later when our program ended at 4:30.Call the parents? We did that and if we were lucky they would answer and tell us they were on their way, but most of the time, the cell phone numbers they listed and emergency numbers were all disconnected.

I use the summer hours to help my grandchildren excel for the following year and ensuring they do math, reading, English, history, geography for at least an hour to two hours a day in addition to their 45 minutes reading requirement is absolute necessary for several reasons:

1- They need to keep their minds fresh and sharp and I feel if you let them do nothing but play, they will forget (I have already seen this in school this year) a lot of what they learned before summer vacation.

2- Children get bored of playing outside and soon you will hear, there is nothing to do, I am bored, but if you offer them some learning games and books, they will do them.

3- Children like to learn. Even those that seem to need help the most can and will learn if given the opportunity.

What about children who are required by law and the courts to spend summer vacations with their mom or dad in regards to divorce and custody? What about those children who visit their grandparents in another state for entire summers or even in other countries?

You can quote all the statistics you want in regards to schools and children in other countries, but look at so many of our curriculums that are set in stone and teachers are not allowed to deviate from their lessons?

I just read where cursive writing may become a thing of the past and yet, I know of a Christian homeschool that starts cursive out almost immediately and students will learn printing later.

My granddaughters 2nd grade teacher was teaching her kids algebra and never told them what they were learning for several weeks. That is what teaching and education are about. There are more things such an unschool which I know so little about. You can hire tutors if you can afford them.

I know there are year round schools as we have one in our city, but when you have mandated visitation from courts, you are asking the parent or parents to pay more money to fly or drive their child to an out of state parent.